Richmond Park

At almost 2,400 acres in size, Richmond Park is the largest Royal Park in London. Once in the park, one does not feel like they are in London at all, expect for the occasional glimpse of a building.

We walked there from home and then meandered around the park for a ~12-mile walk in beautiful weather.

There are hundreds of wild deer in the park, because it is that big.

It is amazing to be able to get so close to these large animals

Halloween at Vinopolis 2011

Our friends Bender and Katherine were in town for Halloween this year so the 6 of us (Cyndi & Berney also) attended a party at Vinopolis which is a really cool venue in Central London for those who enjoy good wine. The venue is neat on a normal day but they did a fantastic job of decorating for the occasion (wish we had more pics of the decorations but we forgot our camera). Either way we had fun dressing up with friends, doing the tasting tours, eating Toad in the Hole for the first time, and getting our dance on with friends. Also, Olly and I were selected for first place in the Costume Contest. As a result, we were gifted with a nice bottle of Prosecco that the 6 of us proceeded to enjoy :-) Apparently the one pic Vinopolis chose to use in reference to the event is the one of us with the lady who gave us the prize...see here

Us with Katherine and Bender, aren't we just too scary :-)

At least one pic of the interior decorations as the venue

Us with Berney and his scythe in the background and Cyndi behind him in la-la land

Oxford Visit with Friends

We took a quick train over to Oxford one weekend with our friends Cyndi and Berney to visit the universities, architecture, and history that this city is famed for. The day was spent wandering through the cobblestone streets to see the many beautiful campuses which have housed academia for many many many centuries. There were also some great parks to visit while strolling along the rivers. The city also had an excellent covered market where we saw some very delectable options and tried what had to have been some of the best cookies ever. Oxford is definitely worth a visit no matter how much time you have to spare. Here are some pics of our time there....

This campus is where most Hogwarts scenes were filmed for Harry Potter movies

China - Hot Pot in Beijing

I have definitely had the pleasure of eating Hot Pot before, but hot pot in China is (as one should expect) definitely quite an experience. This was in a phenomenal Beijing restaurant.

The table before we got started: the Hot Pot itself is split in half with the regular side on the left and the hot side on the right. Our friendly Beijing hosts spoiled us with a vast assortments of foods: lamb, beef, chicken, shrimp, different kinds of mushrooms, other vegetables whose names I did not get and more. One highlight in this restaurant was the sauce buffet: to go along with the hot pot, you make your own sauce using many ingredients including crushed garlic, sesame oil and paste, mushroom sauce, parsley, chili sauce, etc...

The local beer, Yanjing, is another nice accompaniment with the meal

You are probably looking at this picture thinking "What the hell is this?!?" The answer is "Noodles!" (see video below for live demonstration of noodle making made fresh, right at our table)

China - Shanghai

I got the opportunity to go to China for work, and spend 4-5 days each in Shanghai and Beijing. While most of the time was of course dedicated to work, I was able to see some of the sights during a weekend spent over there. Here are some of the highlights from Shanghai.

The Old City of Shanghai contains many old buildings with pagoda-style roofs. It is also a famous commerce area, where one can find shops selling everything from teas, to jade to counterfeit goods.

This gorgeous building is right next to the Yuyuan Garden in the Old City of Shanghai

Inside the City God Temple of Shanghai (or Chenghuang Miao), this beautiful altar with statues can be found.

An unidentified work of art in the city, right outside the Science and Technology museum

Nanjing Road at night:This shopping street gets extremely busy, as well as entertaining.

Nanjing Road dead-ends into the Bund, a pleasant walking area along the Huangpu River, from which I took this picture of the downtown area at night

While I tried to find some strange food in China, this is probably the oddest I came across: duck tongues. The taste was good, but having to eat around the cartilage was too much work for the little amount of actual meat on them.

Random Pics for the Middle East

The Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai is the tallest building in the world

Night view of a part of Dubai from the observation deck on the Burj Khalifa tower

In the US, you can get a penny flattened and get a souvenir embossing of the attraction you are visiting. But in Dubai, you buy a souvenir bar of gold on the Burj Khalifa

A typical Mosque in Dubai

The Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi is a beautiful landmark, in an otherwise pretty secluded part of town

Doha Qatar is a growing city, located on the Persian Gulf

And we're back....again :-)

Apologies to our family & friends who do actually read our blog, we have not been good with regular updates. However, we definitely want to keep our London experience blog going so please bear with us during these slow posting times.

What been going on? Well, from a work perspective Olly had to travel about 3 weeks in a row to many different countries...more to come on that topic. I have been back to work for 2 1/2 months now so also keeping very busy during the week.

Our weekends have been a mix of birthday celebrations, impromptu barbecues with friends, visiting Oxford with friends (more to come on that topic as well). For Olly's birthday this year, we had a few friends over for a yummy dinner, trying our hands at balloon figures, and an evening of dancing. I made an appetizer of baked Brie with a port, walnut, and blackcurrant topping served with toasted baguette. The main course was a Duck Confit which I made for the first time and must say it turned out very well with sides of braised cabbage & a nice pillau rice. Here is the recipe for anyone who would like to try: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2085/barneys-confit-of-duck

We recently had our first visitor here in London, our great friend Dan! He is in town for work and so we had the pleasure of his company last weekend. We showed him a few of favorite markets, enjoyed a delicious picnic, and strolling along the South Bank.

This coming weekend two more of our best friends, Katherine & Bender, will be flying into town to visit us. They will stay with us for the weekend, go to Scotland for a few days, and then rejoin us for the following weekend. We are so excited to have familiar faces here & have the chance to show them some of our new ropes! All signs point to us having 3 (maybe 4) friends in town this weekend so there will be no shortage of good times to be had!!

Once our last few weeks of pictures have been uploaded, we will add more posts. But for now, I leave you with one of our recent favorites...Dan and the new hat he found this past weekend in London

We love you Dan!

Hiking to the highest point in England - Scafell Pike

On Sunday, we hiked up Scafell Pike, the tallest point in England at 3,209 feet. The hike up was not technically difficult but still fairly strenuous as it was steep in the form of rock steps for most of the way. The biggest variable in the hike in general is the weather, as many hikers get to the top to find that there is no visibility due to clouds and therefore miss out on the breathtaking views.

Here are a few pictures of our hike:

During the early part of the hike, we walked from the campground through some very green fields.

Steeper than it looks in the picture, the trail turned into a series of rock steps

After the series of rock steps, the trail become a dirt trail again. In this picture of Scafell Pike, we went up the right side through a field of scree, walked across the summit, and came down the let side.

Even at higher altitude, we still ran into some scattered sheep feasting on the luscious grass.

As we got to the top of the scree field and scrambled up a gully to what we expected was the top, it got really windy as Leigh-Anne almost floated away.

The final scramble in the gully!

At the end of the gully, we expected to find the summit, but instead realized that our workout was not yet over since we had to cross this huge field of rocks to get to the actual summit, at the right side of this picture. 

Finally at the summit: do you notice how we are right at cloud level?

As we start on the way back down, clouds are coming in to the disappointment of hikers still on their way up.

Rolling mountains with scattered lakes

On our way down, Leigh-Anne was just really excited that we made it to the summit before it got clouded over.

Our campground is in the little woods, right above my head in the picture.

All the way back down the mountain, we had to take a victory shot before heading to the pub!

On most days, Scafell Pike is in the clouds completely, as we saw many times from the campground.

During Camping Trip - Hike Around Wastwater Lake

 Our campsite near Wasdale Head really was amidst beautiful surroundings. The first day there we decided to do the 5 hour hike around Wastwater Lake (the deepest lake in England). The hike took us through so much different scenery, path types, and levels of difficulty that we felt it was a truly well-rounded hike offering great degrees of beauty & challenge. Towards the end of the hike, I remember remarking that had we seen a bit of desert we would have covered pretty much all types of scenery. An excellent outdoor spot for lovers of unspoiled natural beauty and adorable sheep :-)

Early part of trail, nice and easy

Some of the many sheep we came across while hiking

Just such a nice area to experience

Now the trail gets a bit less obvious but still pretty

What happened to the trail? That is the trail and boy was hiking across that scree scary (for me anyways...Olly loved it)

Out of the scary stuff and back to more relaxed hiking

One of the many little country roads we drove on (in the dark) which now looks completely different

It is a body of water right, how could he not get in?

The coolest & best placed farm ever (in our opinion)

This was the nearby 'village' to our campsite where we enjoyed our Sunday night meal